


The Wind Speaks

by laniew1



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s probably crazy, it’s too bad that they don’t have head-doctor that could diagnose that as easily as Kate as made the boy human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They move him into an isolated area.

Derek thinks this place might have been a police station once upon a time; there are two rooms that they’ve converted to holding cells of a sort. There’s a one way mirror and the kid doesn’t know that they’re watching him.

At least he doesn’t _act_ like he knows that they’re watching him.

He sits on the bunk and has his knees drawn up to his chest. He’s staring at the ceiling now, before he’d been lying on his back, hands behind his head, also staring at the ceiling.

Derek can’t see anything interesting about the ceiling, and can’t figure out what the kid is mumbling.

The monitors are turned on, but it’s mostly just gibberish. Nonsense words and syllables.

“He’s not metal,” Kate says behind him. She’s their defacto doctor, she used to be a vet and she loudly proclaims to anyone that’ll listen that she’s not got the necessary training to heal human injuries.

She still does it though. Because there isn’t anyone else that can.

She moves up beside him, Kyle on his other side and they watch the boy mumble to himself.

He’s probably crazy, it’s too bad that they don’t have head-doctor that could diagnose that as easily as Kate as made the boy human.

“He’s crazy,” Derek says. Kyle is shaking his head next to him.

“He’s not crazy,” Kyle says. He sounds sure, confident in that. Derek lets it go because there are so few things that Kyle is sure about anymore, he’ll let him have this one until the boy proves him wrong.

“He said his name was John Connor?” Kate asks beside him, he glances over and she looks slightly puzzled.

“Yeah… why? You know him or something?”

“No… I mean… it’s just I went to school with a John Connor, we must have been… god twelve, thirteen. I can’t even remember anymore. That John Connor would have to be in thirties by now; he definitely wouldn’t be a seventeen year old kid. He could probably have a kid about that boy’s age though… if he started early enough.”

“Maybe Sarah will know,” Kyle says softly. He says her name reverently, like she’s a God. They don’t even know her last name, she’s never trusted them enough to tell them that… yet his brother has been half in love with her since he was old enough to know what love was.

Derek thinks that if she touches his brother he might have to kill her. Kyle’s not a kid, is an adult in his own right, but he’ll still always be Derek’s baby brother.

“Sarah doesn’t know everything,” Derek says. He regrets it the minute he says it, Kyle’s face goes hard and cold like it only does when Derek is saying something he doesn’t want to hear.

He glares at Derek and stalks out of the room.

“You shouldn’t…”

“We don’t know anything about her, she comes, she goes, she’s completely the most unreliable person that we get reliable intel from _ever_. Yet Kyle thinks she walks on water,” Derek mutters. He’s pissed, normally he’s got a better check on his temper then that.

“She saved his life,” Kate reminds him.

“His life wouldn’t have needed saving if it hadn’t been for her,” Derek snorts.

“Still, you should at least try and act like you know he’s not a seven year-old kid anymore, he’s a grown man, he should at least _think_ he can make his own decisions.”

  


*******************************************************

  
Allison is in watching the kid the next time that Derek checks on him. She’s got a pad of paper in front of her and she seems to be writing down the nonsense that he’s still spouting off.

“He’s not sleeping,” she says. She doesn’t look up, just keeps writing.

“At all?”

Allison shakes her head. “He just sits there or lays there and keeps mumbling this over and over again; he’s keeping himself from falling asleep.”

“Maybe Kate can give him something,” Derek says. He watches for a minute. “You figured out what he’s jabbering about in there?”

“I think its code of some sort.”

“Code? What kind of code?”

Allison shrugs. “Not a clue, nothing I’ve heard before, nothing we use…” she glances up at him, pen tapping against the paper. Derek looks at the scribbling, it’s the same crap over and over again, whatever the kid is saying he’s repeating it, not saying anything new.

It could be math calculations for all the sense it makes.

“Kyle said he was going to try and get in touch with Sarah?”

“He thinks she might know something about the kid.”

“Do you think she does?” Allison looks at where the kid is rocking back and forth. Derek sees dark bags under his red eyes; the kid can’t last much longer like this. He’ll talk to Kate; see about sneaking a sedative into his water.

He won’t touch their food but he’ll drink the water if he has to.

“I think if Sarah knew about the kid she’d already be here,” Derek says. He looks down at the pad one more time, still nothing but gibberish. Allison turns the pad to a new page and Derek leaves to find Kate.

  


*******************************************************

  
The kid looks innocent when he’s sleeping. He’d fought the sedative once he figured out what they were doing. Kate will have to go in once Derek is sure that the kid is under and check his hands, his head. He’d done anything he could think of to keep from going under.

Derek wonders what he fears in his own head that would cause him to not welcome the respite that sleep offers from the hell they live in on a daily basis.

“Okay?” Kate asks, she arches a brow at him, crosses her arms over her chest and he nods reluctantly and trails after her.

Allison stays in the other room, ready to sound the alarm if the kid is playing possum. Derek doesn’t think he is, the position that he’d lost his battle in looks pretty uncomfortable.

Derek opens the door and precedes Kate in, picking the boy up easily in his arms, transferring him to the bed. Once he steps back Kate moves in, kneeling by the bed, bag open by her feet.

He makes a pain filled sound but doesn’t wake when Kate cleans the wounds on his hands. Kate soothes him absently, running a hand over his head. She looks surprised when she sees blood there; like she’d forgotten that she’d been standing there watching him bang his head into a concrete wall to keep from losing his battle against her drugs.

“Right hand is probably broken, I don’t have what I need here to set it,” she says as she handles it gently. She cleans it as best she can, the kid still moans quietly.

“I don’t really…” Derek starts.

“We’ll take him to the infirmary,” she stares at him, eyes brooking no disagreement. She won’t be fought on this and he acquiesces with a scowl.

She probably didn’t bring whatever else she needed on purpose.

“You can strap him to the bed if it’ll make you feel better,” she mutters.

He crosses his arms over his chest, damn right he will. He won’t put everyone at risk for one boy who doesn’t look like he could wrestle Allison and win. But he’s learned the hard way that sometimes appearances can be deceiving.

  


*******************************************************

  
Sarah descends upon them while Kate is setting the boys hand.

He’s not sure how Kyle got in touch with her, there’s only one frequency that she listens to religiously (though what she’s looking for he hasn’t been able to figure it out, it’s been completely silent for years) the rest she scans through on a random basis.

Derek leaves Kate and Allison with three armed guards just in case the boy wakes up and manages to break his restraints.

Sarah is waiting, Kyle talking quietly to her when he approaches them. He can hear Kyle describing the lightning storm that had blown through, the one that had taken them out of their camp only for them to return empty handed finding a boy wearing Kyle’s spare jacket and nothing else waiting for them.

“There was a boy?” Sarah interrupts. There is a tone to her voice that Derek hasn’t heard before, she sounds… anxious, excited, nervous. Derek hasn’t heard it before, not from Sarah anyway, he doesn’t know quite what to quantify it as.

Derek and Kyle exchange a look and Derek is gratified to see that Kyle looks just as puzzled as he probably does.

“Yeah, probably about sixteen, maybe seventeen if you’re being generous,” Derek says.

“Does he have a name, did he give you a name?” she asks, and that’s definitely excitement in her voice, maybe with a tinge of worry.

“Called himself John Connor… that mean something to you?” Derek asks.

Sarah doesn’t say anything just stumbles backwards, Kyle rushes forward but the wall catches her first. She presses a hand to her heart, the other to her mouth.

“Oh thank god,” she mutters, over and over under her breath. “Oh thank god, finally.”

“Sarah?” Kyle asks, he touches her arm as Derek takes a step forward. “Sarah, do you know who the boy is?”

“He’s,” Sarah’s voice breaks. In all the years that Derek has known her, he’s never seen Sarah lose her composure like this. Like the emotions running through her are just too much for her to handle. “He’s my son.”

Kyle’s hand drops and Derek doesn’t need to look to see disappointment, sadness written on his face.

  


*******************************************************

  
The boy is still out when they get to the room that masquerades as their infirmary. Kate has finished setting his hand in a splint and she’s taking blood now, has an IV set up. Derek figures it’s her way of keeping him from sending the boy back to the room he’d been confined to.

Sarah being there, Sarah telling them that the kid is her son had pretty much destroyed any hope that Derek had of getting the kid back into the room.

Now Sarah _and_ Kate will fight him, and probably Kyle as well once he comes to grips with Sarah having a kid.

Allison had been scowling at him since the beginning so he already knows her opinion on the matter.

Sarah presses a hand to her mouth but doesn’t quite manage to squash the sound that comes out.

“Sarah,” Kate smiles at her. The two women are entirely different, are years apart in age, but get along like life-long best friends whenever they get a chance to interact.

“Is… Is he okay?” Sarah asks, she walks slowly to the bed, posture hunched like she’s expecting someone to come from nowhere and attack her.

“He fought the sedatives,” Kate says, she looks confused as to why Sarah would care, but offers the information anyway. “He broke one hand, has some minor contusions on his forehead from banging it against a wall.”

“He doesn’t like to be drugged,” Sarah says softly. She touches his arm, careful of the IV, wraps her hand around it as if she’s trying to prove that he’s really there, she hunches even further into herself. There’s a sound and her shoulders shake.

Derek doesn’t need to see her face to know she’s crying.

He wonders how the two of them got separated, if John being taken away from her made her the stone-hearted, cold bitch that she is now.

He can’t picture her ever being light-hearted and happy; she had to have gotten pregnant before the walls went up because he can’t see any guy battling his way through them _just_ to sleep with her now.

He wonders what happened to the guy… did he die, did he leave?

He’s obviously not around, Sarah’s never mentioned any guy, friend or otherwise.

“He always… he hated it, we did locals if he needed sewing up, mostly we just tried to not let him get hurt at all in the first place,” Sarah wipes at her face.

Derek wonders who ‘we’ is.

“Sarah?” Kate looks over at him but Derek is watching Sarah, this is the most emotion that he’s ever seen her show, sometimes he thought her just as much a machine as the ones they hunt.

“He’s my son,” Sarah whispers, her knees give out and she goes down before anyone can get to her.

“He’s going to be okay,” Kate whispers, she lays an arm over Sarah’s shoulder, pulls her into a half hug. “He’s going to be fine, they’re superficial injuries they won’t even leave a scar… he’s going to be fine.”

“This isn’t the way things were supposed to be, this isn’t how… this is not the world that I tried to prepare him for,” Sarah says.

None of them has any clue what she’s talking about. Maybe Sarah doesn’t even know at this point.

Derek hears the dogs go insane, barks and growls resonating through their whole compound, so he already has his gun up even before he hears the voice.

“No it wouldn’t be, not with time travel involved,” a voice says.

“Metal!” he yells and Kyle is next to him his own gun in hand. Sarah is back on her feet her gun out, shoving Kate behind her.

There’s metal in the form of a woman standing on the other side of the room. The boy, John Connor, _Sarah’s son,_ , is strapped down, still unconscious, lying completely helpless in the space between them.

Derek can’t figure out how to get the kid out of the way without putting someone else at risk.

“Oh come now, if I wanted to harm any of you I’ve had plenty of opportunities over the last several days.”

“Catherine Weaver,” Sarah spits.

“Sarah Connor,” the metal steps forward. It lays a hand on John’s arm and Sarah snarls, teeth bared.

“How is Savannah?”

“Savannah is fine, she’s a lovely young woman, she’s in much better shape then _my son_ ,” Sarah growls, her arm is steady, Derek doesn’t know why she hasn’t taken the shot yet.

“This is not my doing, if you want to place blame look around you,” the metal says, it reaches across the boy and pulls the IV’s loose, Kate makes a sound of protest; when it begins releasing the restraints locking down the boys’ arms, Derek makes his own.

“I had no idea that we would end right into the middle of a Rebel encampment, but considering who he is I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised,” it sounds amused, fond.

“You know this thing?” Derek snarls, he’s talking to Sarah but he doesn’t move his eyes from the metal.

“Oh Sarah, still not any better at sharing your secrets.” It looks across John Connor’s body at them; it is seemingly disregarding their weapons and talking to Sarah Connor like she’s an old friend.

Derek feels like this couldn’t get any odder.

“You should leave, all of you,” it says.

“I don’t think so,” Kyle states.

“We have not fulfilled our mission yet,” it says, it looks directly at Sarah and it seems to mean something to her because her arm starts to lower.

“Sarah,” Kate hisses and Sarah shakes her head.

“I don’t know where he is,” Sarah says, she sounds tired. “Ellison and I have been trying to track him for years, so we could just send you back when you arrived, so my son would be where he needed to be when the world went to hell.”

It smiles at her and Derek shudders.

“This is, unfortunately, a one way trip; I am surprised you didn’t figure that out sooner.”

Sarah makes a sound of denial.

“Oh come now, you didn’t think that once things changed enough in the past that there wouldn’t be safeguards put into place to keep anyone from tampering any further with things, did you? John Connor jumping forward into time… that changes things in an irrevocable way.”

Derek looks over and Sarah is staring at the metal in horror.

“We will find John Henry in short order; but there will be no returning to where we came from once that task is complete, your John knew this, this is what he agreed to.”

“John didn’t…”

It has successfully got John’s restraints off and is pulling him into a sitting position with gentle hands. Derek wouldn’t have believed it if he wasn’t seeing it with his own two eyes.

It touches his face and the kids eyes blink once, twice.

He makes a sound.

“You should leave now,” it says. “Before he wakes completely.”

The kid is slumping into its shoulder, completely trusting, so out of it that he probably doesn’t even realize that it’s a hunk of metal patting him on the back in a soothing manner instead of a flesh and blood human woman.

Sarah stares at her son and Derek can see helplessness, hopelessness in her eyes. Like she knows no other way for things to end.

Derek aims his gun and takes the shot.

Sarah yells, the metal staggers back, forced down to its knees by the impact and Derek can see the kid slumping forward, sliding off the edge of the bed without the metal in front of him for support; Kyle is the closest to him and manages, barely, to latch onto his upper arms over the bed before he crashes to the ground.

The kid is blinking steadily now and reaches out a hand to steady himself.

“Weaver?” he says, small tiny voice.

“Hello, John,” it says.

Kyle lets go of him though he stands at the ready, Derek still has his gun up and Sarah isn’t moving at all.

The metal has already healed the injury, and is back on its feet in front of John.

“You disappeared,” he says. His brow crinkles and he goes to rub at his forehead with his hand, he seems surprised to see the splint.

“We didn’t exactly land in territory that would have been friendly to me,” it says. It picks up the bullet that Derek had fired at it; it cups John’s good hand in one of its own and drops the bullet in his palm.

He looks at it blankly, looks at the metal, turns his head to the side just a fraction. Derek knows that the kid knows that they’re standing there even though he doesn’t turn to face them.

“She’s on our side,” he says, he tightens his hand into a fist. “Sort of,” he amends softly.

Derek snorts.

“Have you found him yet?” he asks and the metal shakes its head.

“He’s hiding himself very well, but he’ll be out of place here, things are different. He should not be hard to locate once we begin avidly looking.”

John nods. “What do you think he’s doing with her chip?” he asks. He seems to be ignoring them; Derek doesn’t think that’s actually the case though.

“I would not even want to fathom a guess, she gave it to him willingly though, whether she was apologizing to you for betraying you or apologizing to him for leading him into a trap or a mixture of both we won’t know until we find him.”

John nods and steps away from the table, he sways slightly. He drops the bullet on the bed he’d been strapped to when he turns.

He doesn’t seem surprised to see any of them, there’s still that recognition in his eyes when he looks at Derek and Allison, still awe-filled eyes when he looks at Kyle, nothing at all when he sees Kate.

Derek can tell the exact instant he sees Sarah though because his eyes widen and there’s a few seconds when Derek isn’t sure he’s actually breathing.

“Mom?” he says in a whisper.

Sarah manages a smile, weak and small as it might be.

“Hi John,” she shifts on her feet and they stare at each other. Completely silent.

The metal reaches out a hand and John jerks in surprise when it touches him.

“We should depart so that we might begin,” it says.

“What are you looking for, maybe we can help?” Kate asks.

Derek doesn’t know if she feels it like he does, the imperative need to keep the boy among them. He’s human, one of them by virtue of being Sarah’s son. He gets the feeling if they let him leave with the metal there’s no telling if they’ll even see him again.

Derek still isn’t even sure how Sarah has a kid, he doesn’t know anyone that would jump into the sack with Sarah like she is now… except for Kyle and there’s _no way_ this kid can be Kyle’s.

“You can not help us with this task, explanations would take too long and impede our search considerably,” the metal says. It wraps a hand around John’s arm, John takes a step back so he’s standing next to it but doesn’t break eye contact with Sarah, with _his mother_.

“I’ll return him to you,” it says. It’s not speaking to them, it’s speaking to Sarah and Sarah nods her acknowledgement.

“He needs supplies; food, water… weapons,” Kyle says, his voice is full of disbelief. Like he doesn’t understand why Sarah is letting her son leave with the metal that they’ve been fighting for more years then they any of them want to count.

“I have everything that we need to continue our search,” the metal says. It’s moving John forward, it’s telling that it is keeping John between its body and the rest of them.

John stops their forward momentum long enough to reach out and Sarah grips at his hand, manages a watery smile.

“I’ll be here,” she says, she looks at the metal. “You bring him back here every couple of days, he needs to be around people, needs to rest and relax and not…”

“I will attempt to return him to you on regular intervals, I can guarantee nothing.”

Kyle unclips his radio, holds it out and waits for John to take it.

John looks at it, looks at Kyle and lets the metal lead him out the door.

  


*******************************************************

  
It sometimes feels like they’re sharing custody of John Connor with the metal.

Derek wonders what lies it feeds him when it has him alone. Wonders if they should be preparing themselves for the day that it doesn’t return him or John chooses to believe it over them.

For now it returns him every three days like clockwork to their encampment. It stands on the outskirts of their lines and pats John on the shoulder and they converse in low tones that none of their bugs or monitors have been able to pick up.

Then John slings a backpack over his shoulder and walks towards them. Normally by the time John is walking towards them Derek will have gotten the call that he has returned and be waiting. Sarah standing next to him.

Sarah will hug him, Derek will pat him on the back, Kyle will smile a small smile at him because even though he’s disappointed that Sarah has a kid by someone else there’s something about John that makes him want to protect him, something that makes him feel like Kyle should know him.

 _“He just looks familiar, like someone I should know.”_

He’d confessed that to Derek one night while they were out on watch. Quiet voice saying that he’d wanted to hate the kid for being Sarah’s but something in him couldn’t.

John is normally pale, quiet. They find him a cot and he puts headphones on and turns on his side and ignores them.

They just let him be for the first half a day, then Allison will bully him into eating with her and Sarah will ask him questions about the search that he has undertaken with the metal.

Derek wants to tell him that it’ll be near impossible, like finding a needle in stack of other needles, to find the one metal in the midst of all the ones out there that they’re searching for.

“We’re getting close,” John says. He’s fiddling with something that looks like an old TV remote control; Derek sits next to him on his cot and can see that’s what it is.

John looks over at him without actually moving his head.

“How can you be sure?” Derek asks.

John shrugs.

There’s a lot of questions that John won’t answer, Sarah has tried to explain what John and the metal are looking for. A piece of metal with the chip from another piece of metal. There’s a chance that one or both of them had betrayed them or is actively attempting to betray them.

The thought that John and Sarah had trusted metal in the first place is disconcerting. Sarah is pretty gung-ho about destroying every single last one of them.

“I just do,” he says. He presses two buttons together and nothing happens. He sighs, Derek stands and pats him on the shoulder.

Leaves him to tinker with broken things that he has no hope of repairing. He guesses everyone needs a hobby.

  


*******************************************************

  
The metal misses bringing John back, Derek’s been waiting for this to happen since John left with the metal the first time, it’s the first time since they’ve had joint custody of the kid that it’s missed a drop-off.

For the entirety of that first day, going into the second that he should have returned Sarah paces the edge of their encampment like a wild animal, waiting for the call that they’ve been sighted. She refuses to come inside, just waits there for her son to return.

If she knew where to look she’d already be gone.

When it rolls into the fourth day she stops moving. She sits on the ground and stares at the horizon where her son is hiding away from her.

Derek doesn’t wander far, he has a feeling that things have gone pear-shaped and he knows that if John is dead that Sarah will be pretty close behind.

Kyle sits beside her and the three of them keep a silent vigil waiting for the inevitable.

  


*******************************************************

  
Eight days pass, Derek has all but given up and figures that they’ll find the kids body at some point while out on patrol.

So it comes as a bit of a shock when Allison comes running after him to tell him that they’ve been spotted.

Kyle and Sarah are both there and Kate arrives just seconds after he does with her bag in hand. When he puts his eyes to the sky he can see the metal carrying something, they’re still too far away to see a face but his gut knows that it’s John.

It takes forever; at least it feels like that, for the metal to reach them.

It’s the first time that the metal has entered their camp since that first time when it took John away with it, this time it’s trudging slowly. As they get closer Derek can see a lot of red.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

The dogs are going ballistic and he hopes someone is holding them back. All they need is the dogs to attack while the metal still has John in its arms.

When they clear the knoll Kate rushes forward, Sarah just ahead of her and they pull the boy onto the ground.

He doesn’t make a sound of pain or anything as Kate pushes and prods, doing whatever doctor stuff she needs to do to assess his condition. Derek watches carefully and can see that he’s still alive, still breathing.

Just barely but at this point he’ll take whatever miracles he can get.

Kate looks over at him and he nods, it’s the work of seconds to get the boy on a stretcher and inside, it feels a lot longer.

Sarah is still on the ground, she’s staring at the blood on her hands and if looks could kill the one that she levels at the metal would probably have done the trick.

The metal reaches into its pocket and Derek is gratified to hear more then one safety being clicked off around him.

It pulls out two chips.

“Cameron’s,” it says, dropping the smaller of the two into the hand that Sarah holds out. It looks at the one that it is still holding. “John Henry,” it says quietly, if metal could sound remorseful it would. It closes its hand into a fist and crushes the chip in its hand.

“He betrayed us,” it says. “He attacked John when we found him, whatever his plans were for that chip I do not believe he had managed to bring them to fruition.”

“How can you be sure?” Sarah asks.

“Because this version of John Connor does not have a death sentence hanging over his head, and if he had managed to relay any of the information on that chip to Skynet he would have one.”

Sarah nods.

“It’s done then?” Sarah asks.

“It is done.”

  


*******************************************************

  
“I need to talk to you,” Kate says in a hushed whisper, she’s yanking on Derek’s arm and grabs Kyle’s on the way.

Sarah raises an eyebrow but continues on into the room, to John’s side.

Kate pulls them into a room and closes the door behind her, leaning against it. Derek thinks the room might be a storage closet, there’s really not enough room for three of them comfortably.

“I need both of you to donate,” she says, rushed voice. Derek tries to ignore the blood down the front of her shirt.

“Shouldn’t you be more focused on John at the moment?” Kyle asks, he exchanges confused looks with Derek. Kate takes blood from them every couple of weeks, they’re the only two with their blood type and if something happens to both of them at the same time they’re completely fucked.

“I am, that’s why I’m telling you that I need both of you to donate. He has your blood type,” Kate says. She stops, takes a deep breath.

“You’re kidding,” Derek says. Sarah is a universal donor, he knows that, she donates every time she comes in… that means that whoever the kids father is he had to have the same blood as them.

He starts to get that prickly uncomfortable feeling in the back of his neck. Something telling him there’s something else going on here, something he should know about.

“No,” Kate just stares at them both.

“We’ll donate Kate, you know that,” Kyle says. “You don’t even need to ask.”

He looks over at Derek and Derek nods his agreement.

“Okay, okay,” Kate says, she goes to run a hand over her face and seems to notice for the first time that she has her bloody gloves still on. “I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to help him,” she says.

“You’re just going to do your best, Kate,” Kyle says softly. “That’s all any of us can do.”

  


*******************************************************

  
Sarah is standing to the side of John’s head, leaning over him, whispering softly. She looks up when they walk in and she doesn’t look surprised to see Kate gesture for the two of them to be hooked up.

She just gets this look of sad resignation on her face, closes her eyes and leans close to her son once more.

  


*******************************************************

  
Sarah disappears when it becomes apparent that John is going to live.

Derek isn’t sure why, isn’t sure what her secrets are.

He’s pretty sure that her secrets involve _them_ in some way, he’s pretty sure they have all the puzzle pieces he’s just not sure how they all fit together yet.

Something in his gut is telling him that this kid belongs to them. That this kid is part of him and Kyle. His gut is never wrong, so he listens to it.

Sarah vanishes and either him or Kyle are with the boy at all times. Just in case Kate needs more blood, just in case the boy has nightmares and needs to be soothed.

Either of their voices will work, Allison’s voice even works half the time.

When it’s the two of them together in the room Kate leaves them alone, closes the door and they stand there watching the boy sleep. He’s not woken since the metal brought him back. Kate isn’t calling it a coma but Derek doesn’t know what else it could be.

“He’s mine,” Kyle says, Derek looks at him and wonders how Kyle can sound so sure. Then Kyle reaches into one of his pockets, pulls out a folded sheet of paper. “She left it in my room; I found it last night after you took over.”

Kyle holds it out and Derek takes it, unfolds it under Kyle’s watchful eyes.

Sarah’s handwriting is on the paper, it’s fairly short and it takes Derek only a few minutes to read it, to get the gist of what information Sarah chose to impart upon her departure.

“Hell of a story, if you believe it,” Derek says. Kyle just looks at him.

“You don’t?”

“Time travel isn’t possible, it’s science fiction.”

“So are sentient robots but I see them doing a pretty fantastic job of trying to destroy us anyway,” Kyle stops, takes a deep breath. “The boy is mine, and even if he isn’t…”

Derek doesn’t say anything.

Even if he isn’t… Derek knows he is. He’s either Kyle’s or he’s Derek’s and Kyle was the one that Sarah had always been drawn to, the one that she’d seek out the few times she was in their camp. If the kid is anyone’s its Kyle’s.

Which meant Kyle had to have time traveled too, Kyle had probably died because there was no way that Kyle would have voluntarily left Sarah if he’d had the chance to be with her.

If he’d had a chance to raise their kid together.

Derek touches John’s forehead. Smoothes back his hair.

“Well at least we bypassed the terrible two’s and the angsty pre-teen years,” Derek says.

Kyle laughs softly.

  


*******************************************************

  
John doesn’t take well to being coddled.

He rips his stitches the first time he tries to get out of bed and Kate yells. He rips them a second time and Kate threatens to have Derek tie him down to the bed.

John looks betrayed at that and Derek isn’t sure how he became the thing that Kate threatens John with to get him to do the stuff he needs to.

Kyle hovers, not obviously, but he hovers nonetheless.

Derek does as well, but he’s their de facto leader, he _should_ be there. Making sure that John doesn’t get them all killed. Making sure that John doesn’t get _himself_ killed.

A week after he wakes up the metal is found in his room. Derek still doesn’t trust it, but he doesn’t point a gun at it because it had at least brought John back to them.

It probably did so only so they could watch John die, but it didn’t have to do that.

John is holding the chip that it had given to Sarah. The one for the metal it had called Cameron.

John looks over at him and Derek doesn’t close the door, the metal doesn’t hang around long. It comes and goes; normally it passes a little bit of information on along the way.

Some of it they’ve even used.

The tide is starting to turn; the metal army is beginning to fall apart within itself.

“You should destroy it,” the metal says. John wraps his hand around the chip.

“I know,” John says.

The metal pats him on the arm and walks past him out the door. It doesn’t make eye contact with him, doesn’t say a word.

John is really the only person it truly interacts with.

“You need help with that,” Derek says. Johns looks over at him.

“I…”

“It’s right you know, and it pains me in ways you could never imagine to even say those words. Whatever information was on that chip is dangerous, the metal believed that if the information had been passed along that it would have resulted with a death sentence on your head.”

John nods. “She was my friend,” he says softly. Derek knows he isn’t talking about the metal that just left, he’s talking about the metal whose chip is lying locked in his fist.

“She was my friend, she was… she knew me better then anyone else. Knew what I would do to survive, to live. I sent her to me to protect me, to help me. I must have trusted her at one point.”

“You loved it,” Derek says. He hopes the horror isn’t evident in his voice. John doesn’t agree or disagree. Derek wonders where Sarah was during all this.

“She wasn’t real. She was… she was playing a game, she must have been playing it a long time trying to get close enough to either kill me or influence me enough to make me a non-threat.”

“You’ll destroy the chip.”

John nods. “My mom isn’t coming back you know.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know my mom better then anyone else, she’s not coming back. If she hadn’t told Kyle about me she probably would have, but she did, so…”

“She wrote Kyle a letter,” Derek says, he sits down in a chair by the bed, props a foot up on one of bars under the bed that John has been confined to for the last couple of weeks.

“I know, he showed it to me.”

“She told him that he was your dad,” Derek makes a point to make eye contact with him, John doesn’t look away, just blinks. “Hell of a story, your mom prone to being a nut job?”

“A _version_ of Kyle Reese was my dad,” John says softly. “ _That_ guy doesn’t exist anymore, he _never_ has and he _never_ will; because the guy that I was, the one that would send him through time to his mom knowing that it was a suicide mission, knowing that there was no chance of return… that guy doesn’t exist anymore either.”

Derek swings his other foot up to prop on the bars, leans back in the chair.

“Besides time travel isn’t real.”

Derek snorts.

“I’ve got a seventeen year old nephew laying in a hospital bed that would beg to differ.”

  


*******************************************************

  
It has the feeling of ceremony to it. The metal had left behind the supplies they needed and once Kate is satisfied that John getting out of bed will not result in him walking ten steps and keeling over dead John does it.

Derek and Kyle are there, Allison and Kate as well.

They do it outside and John prepares a small area, sets the chip on the ground. He stares at it, bites his lip then stands and brings the heel of his foot down it.

When he moves the chip is smashed, John still strikes the match. Still lights whatever the metal had given him.

Derek watches John watch the chip burn.

When it’s done John looks at him and he looks like a seventeen year old kid that has lost his entire world.

Allison and Kate are walking back inside, talking softly.

Kyle throws an arm over John’s shoulder when the boy walks over to them and Derek pats him on the back.

He watches them walk away, following Allison and Kate inside. His brother and his nephew.

Sarah Connor might have been a crazy bitch that dragged his brother around by the heart that was too big for him, but she’d done the one thing that Derek had thought impossible.

She’d given them family.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s probably crazy, it’s too bad that they don’t have head-doctor that could diagnose that as easily as Kate as made the boy human.

  
He doesn’t know what he thought it was going to be like, coming through to the future, chasing after John Henry for control of Cameron’s chip.

He didn’t think they were going to lock him up, that they weren’t going to trust him.

He has to keep forcibly reminding himself that these are not the people that he knew.

Derek isn’t quite so hard, quite so insane.

Allison is not a human version of Cameron.

And his father, who he’s never met, has only seen a handful of times when the man was a small child is still alive.

This Kyle Reese will never travel back to the past, even if there was a way for him to do so, because there’s no reason to protect Sarah Connor. There’s no John Connor, leader of the resistance that the metal is attempting to erase.

There’s just John Connor, scared out-of-time teen-ager that everyone thinks is nuts.

There’s no reason to protect that kid.

  


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He can feel the dragging sensation of the sedative and he smashes his fists against the walls, bangs his forehead as well when the pain in his hands gets to be too much.

He curses fate and metal and his mother and fights for every last conscious second before the darkness drags him down.

  


******************************************************************************

  
He’s sitting up and he’s groggy and…

He hears the gunshot and doesn’t understand what’s going on until the support that was in front of him is no longer there. Hands grab him under his arms and he would thank them but he can’t seem to make his tongue work just yet.

He blinks and the world comes into a hazy sort of view.

“Weaver?” he says. He can see her on the ground and he wonders where she went, she’d left him alone in the hallway with people that he knew but that didn’t know him.

“Hello John,” she says. Her voice is familiar and he clings to familiar because nothing else is familiar. Weaver, or the metal pretending to be Weaver at least knows him. Knows who he’s supposed to be.

  


******************************************************************************

  
His mom, he sees her and his entire world stops. He was sure she would be dead. Cameron had said that she died, that she got sick and died.

He wonders if Cameron lied to him, lied about his mom in an attempt to tie him that much closer to her.

  


******************************************************************************

  
He leaves with Weaver because they still have a mission.

John Henry is out there, somewhere, with Cameron’s chip and either one or both of them could be trying to betray them.

Betrayal by John Henry doesn’t concern John as much as the possibility of betrayal by Cameron does.

Cameron knew him, Cameron knew his true purpose and what Cameron’s chip knows could bring an axe down on John’s neck.

He doesn’t want to die, not yet.

  


******************************************************************************

  
He goes back every couple of days, Weaver makes sure of it and it takes him a day to feel settled again. To remember how to act around other humans, to remember how to talk and have conversations.

Weaver is okay, she’s not actively trying to kill him so he counts her among his allies, but she’s not the best conversationalist and he thinks she sometimes forgets that he’s human.

He makes six trips back to the base, spends time with his mom, with Allison (who’s not Cameron, every time she talks it gets easier to remember that), with Derek and Kyle. He lets Kate poke and prod at him and doesn’t ask why she’s not poking and prodding at his mom.

Sarah Connor is looking drawn and tired, she looks sick; he doesn’t understand why no one else can see it. He can remember Cameron’s voice in his ear telling him that his mom had died. That there had been nothing he could do to prevent it.

Sarah will tell when she’s ready, if he does it she’ll be mad and he can’t stand to have her mad at him. Not right now.

The last time that he leaves the camp before they find John Henry his mom hugs him tightly, whispers ‘I love you’ in his ear. Derek claps him on the back and tells him that they’ll see him soon.

Kyle just nods at him; John thinks that Kyle doesn’t really like him very much. Allison isn’t there; she’s helping Kate in the infirmary.

John thinks its better that way.

  


******************************************************************************

  
There’s pain, lots of pain and Weavers voice in his ear telling him that he better not die. Weaver is carrying him and he’d be embarrassed, but the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t think he would be doing anything but curling up in a ball to die if Weaver wasn’t there.

He hopes that Weaver destroyed John Henry, he hopes that Weaver got Cameron’s chip back.

He hopes that Weaver isn’t taking him to metal to be finished off now that their mission is completed.

  


******************************************************************************

  
He drifts in and out, he sees his mom and Derek and Kyle and Allison and Kate and their faces are all pale and white and scared.

He doesn’t know what they’re scared of, he’s the one laying on the bed, he’s the one that can’t move without having Kate yell at him, without having Derek pushing him back down and telling him to stay in that gruff voice that is utterly familiar even as it isn’t.

He doesn’t tell anyone that his mom comes to him when he’s able to stay awake for more then 30 minutes at a time.

She sneaks in, making sure to do so when Derek and Kyle aren’t standing guard like they’re afraid he’s going to die if they’re not keeping both sets of eyes on him, he doesn’t know why they care, he’s not much of a threat like this.

Stuck flat on his back in a bed, Weaver hadn’t even needed him for her mission. She’d destroyed John Henry, she’d gotten Cameron’s chip back from him.

All John had done was bleed all over the place and get in the way.

His mom touches his hand and she stares at him like he’s the best, most precious thing she’s ever seen.

Kyle’s not going back to the past, John shouldn’t even exist. John wonders what Sarah Connor would have been like without a savior son to raise. Would she have gotten married, had other kids that could have had normal lives and normal educations?

She taps her fingers against the back of his hand and he focuses on her.

“I’m dying,” she says softly, John bites his lip and doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t tell her he knows, doesn’t tell her that she can’t die, she’s Sarah Connor.

He just looks at her.

“There’s nothing they can do, I’ve managed to stick around a lot longer then they gave me, a lot longer then the tin miss said I would.”

“Mom…” John says, nothing else comes out. Because he doesn’t know what else to say besides ‘don’t go’, ‘don’t leave me’.

If he says those words she’ll still go, and he doesn’t want her last memory of him to be of him begging her to not leave him.

He’s a man now; he can at least pretend to act like one.

“I don’t want you to see me like that, I want you to remember me strong and…” she looks away and John purses his lips together to keep from begging her to stay. He should get a choice in the matter, he knows that even if he could find the right words that she’s already made her choice.

And it’s not to be here at the end.

She touches his hand and when he turns it over, thinking she’s going to lace their fingers together like she used to when he was a kid she puts a chip in it. It’s familiar, it’s Cameron’s.

“You’ll destroy that,” she says. She looks at him, a look of utter seriousness on her face. “No playing with it, no trying to get information off of it,” John nods, to show he understands. “I’m serious, just… the information she had, it’s no good anymore because you’re not who you were supposed to be, but it could still bring you nothing but pain and misery.”

“Okay,” he says softly. He closes his hand around the chip, and ignores the twinge in his heart.

She touches his head, smoothes his hair back.

“I’ll send Savannah and Ellison to you once it’s done,” she says.

When she’s dead he knows, it’s selfish but he hopes they never come. If they never come then his mom will still be alive, she might eventually come back. He nods to show he heard her.

“I love you John.”

He doesn’t get to say the words back to her because she’s gone before he blinks and he wonders if he imagined the whole thing, then he feels the chip in his hand and knows that he didn’t.

  


******************************************************************************

  
When he thinks about it he doesn’t know why she didn’t stay if all she was going to do was go off and die.

She could have sent for Savannah and Ellison, if she didn’t want any of them to see her like that, she could have just refused to see them. Kate would have allowed that he thinks.

He just doesn’t understand why she’s letting Savannah and Ellison see that when it should be his right, as her son, to sit there and hold her hand and tell her that it’s all going to be okay even when they know its not.

He doesn’t tell anyone that she’s gone off to die, he just tells Derek that she won’t be coming back and hopes that Derek can make Kyle understand that looking for her would be a pointless mission.

She tells Kyle in a letter who he is to him, he doesn’t know if Kyle really believes it. Doesn’t know if Kyle really wants to.

But Kyle relaxes around him, now that he knows that he’s not somebody else’s kid. That he’s his kid.

Kyle doesn’t know how to be a dad, but that’s okay because John’s not sure how to have a father, especially a father who’s only a couple of years older then him.

He’s had pseudo fathers, Charlie was the one that he let in the closest, but he’s never had a father try to raise him that is actually bound to him by blood and bone and genetics.

Kyle shows him the letter that his mom left, and its short, three little paragraphs that explain Kyle’s appearance in the past, the way he’d tried to protect her, the way that she’d fallen in love with him.

The child that they’d had together even if he’d never known that the John that sent him back was his.

John wonders if that other version of him had felt grief at sending the only parent he had left back knowing it was a suicide mission.

He’s glad he doesn’t have to make that choice, though he’s still not sure how he even exists if this version of Kyle Reese never went back.

  


******************************************************************************

  
He’s not counting the days so he’s not sure how he knows that its 36 days after his mom left that Savannah and Ellison appear in their camp.

He doesn’t recognize Savannah, but he recognizes Ellison and _they_ both recognize him on sight.

“John!” he hears and when he turns Savannah is already flying at him, arms going around him in a tight hug that has him questioning if she’s not part metal and trying to kill him, Ellison is gaping at him in disbelief. There are guns up and trigger happy fingers itching to fire them.

The metal have been suspiciously quiet, the humans are gaining ground every day. They’re winning, slowly, and it still makes everyone nervous because no one is really sure what’s changed.

Savannah is sobbing against his shoulder and John feels himself go to his knees because them being here can only really mean one thing.

He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t. He lays his forehead against Savannah’s shoulder and they cling to each other.

They’re not siblings, there’s not an ounce of blood shared between them.

But they have the bond of being raised by Sarah Connor and that’s sometimes stronger then blood.

  


******************************************************************************

  
Savannah sits next to him and Kate does a cursory examination, checking her general health before she’s released into John’s care.

Ellison has been escorted away already; Kyle is hovering in the doorway, Derek right beside him. They don’t know what to make of these newcomers to their camp. Don’t know what their connection to John is.

John hasn’t been able to say anything because he thinks if he opens his mouth the only thing that’s going to come out is a wail because his mother his dead.

Better he remain silent until he has a better handle on his emotions.

“She left some tapes for you,” Savannah says, her voice is soft but the room is empty besides them and Kate and the men in the doorway. They all three stiffen but John just nods to show he heard.

“We burned her body,” Savannah continues, “that’s what she wanted.”

John closes his eyes, bows his head.

He’d hoped for a burial, even though he knew his moms thoughts on it. Hoped to have someplace to visit once this was all done and they’d won.

“I’m sorry, John,” she whispers. John wants her to stop talking now.

“I knew,” he says. His voice cracks, it doesn’t sound like his voice at all. “Cameron told me that… she said…” John covers his face with his hands and breathes. His hands smell like dirt, like gun oil. “I’d hoped she was lying… I’d hoped that…”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers again, she lays a hand on his leg, leans into his side. She sounds remorseful; John tries not to feel jealous that his mom had been okay with Savannah there at the end but not him.

“She told me,” he breathes it out. “Mom did… she came… before she left,” he presses his fingers to his eyes. He’s not a little kid. He’s not going to cry, his mom is dead. People’s parents die all the time.

“If she was just going away to die why didn’t she stay here?” he asks, he knows he sounds pitiful, whining, like a little kid. He doesn’t expect an answer, there’s none that he would probably accept anyway.

“She didn’t want you to see her that way, she wanted you to remember her strong, vital; not sick and dying.”

John huffs out a bitter laugh. “At this point all I remember is her giving me up, again.”


End file.
